*The data from this article was sourced in September 2021
Online reviews are one of the most effective word of mouth marketing strategies all businesses should be taking advantage of. Over recent years, online business reviews are even more vital than they have ever been. With an increase in online shopping recently, reviews are being read at an increased rate more than ever. Every business owner should become familiar with the concept of gathering more positive reviews to help propel their business to the next level. Online reviews provide the social proof needed to convince potential customers that your products or services are amazing. An upwards trend can be seen when looking at search terms for “reviews” and definitely shows how vital reviews are trending into 2022.
Online Business Review Statistics
When searching for the top 10 keywords for the search term “reviews” in Australia, the ample search volume for related searches can be seen. This data was gathered in September 2021 and uses data from SimilarWeb which is a data analysis tool that analyzes everything digital such as website traffic and engagement. The highest Month-over-Month (MoM) growth for any of the keywords is for the generic keyword “reviews” with a MoM increase of 240.06%. As the highest growing keyword amongst the top 10 in Australia, it certainly shows searches for business reviews are becoming more vital. Sorting the data by % of traffic share, important observations can be made. The largest growing trend of reviews shows the exceptional growth of the brand ‘manscaped’ MoM at 223.37%. Their aggressive online strategy has paid dividends as more potential customers are looking for social proof online about their brand. Another interesting trend is relating to the 2 weight loss companies here (Noom & Hello Fresh) are both down in review search volume. This is likely due to the impacts of COVID-19 on the diet industry and the increasing number of unmotivated people as a result.
Online review statistics can definitely paint a picture of the trends at any given time in a specific location. When searching for the same data on a global scale the trends are very similar. The top keyword globally is again “reviews”, showing the trend is not just a localised one. Noom is the largest branded search, but is again on a declining trend globally. Reviews are important on a global scale at every level and are only getting more important as evident by the increasing trend of searches.
Online Review Trends
When people search for the word “reviews” within any search query, there are a number of different search intentions. The search could be someone looking for a specific brand or product review, videos reviewing products or a review site such as Trustpilot. The data below shows the top 10 domains receiving traffic in Australia for the query “reviews”. The trend gives an indication of the fastest growing sites and shows the top domain for this search is ‘Product Review’. SimilarWeb data shows actual search intent in the form of traffic share so trends can be analyzed more accurately. In this case, it can be seen that customers typically look at reviews of particular products, services or businesses with this general keyword search.
Looking at the traffic distribution graph below, there is no ‘real’ trend seen just by observing the data. The traffic has remained relatively steady for each of the top 10 sites over the 1 year observed period (September 2020 – August 2021). Google has 2 different subdomains in the top 10 with the support domain having more traffic than the Google account domain. The top Google support landing page is about how to get Google reviews and the top Google account page is the general Google login page. High traffic to these 2 Google domains suggests an increase in people wanting to know more about Google reviews. More traffic to pages about learning and utilising Google reviews indicate that Google is certainly relied upon as the preferred review platform. When observing this data, Trustpilot is the domain with the most lost traffic in this 12 month period. This domain has lost about 10% traffic share overall to sites like YouTube and Google. These sites offer more than reviews with extensive sources of informative videos and sites but are still the top platforms for product and business review information.
Don’t Underestimate The Impact Of Online Reviews
The power of online reviews cannot be underestimated for businesses of any size. The reputation impact and social proof of a good business are invaluable on so many levels. 72% of consumers say that they will take action only after reading a positive review. A real-life example showing off the power of reviews can be seen by taking a look at the search term “Manscaped reviews”. Manscaped employed an aggressive marketing strategy and the impact of this on the Australian market can be seen over a 6 month period between February 2020 and July 2020. Overall the query had a huge boost in just 6 months as a result of the booming marketing campaign.
As a result of their strategy, they had people seeing their brand name everywhere which caused this massive increase in search results for their product. And to no surprise search terms for their reviews increased massively as a result. When comparing the search queries of “Manscaped reviews” and “Manscaped”, search terms for both the product and the reviews increased exponentially. Potential customers clearly wanted to know more from those who had tried the product first hand so turned to online reviews for help. This demonstrates how important obtaining positive online reviews can be and also the importance of knowing how to manage them effectively.
How Business Reviews Can Help Your Business
Online customer reviews are the best form of word of mouth marketing in 2021 and will continue to become even more effective every year. This is due to the increase in online searches for all businesses and their related review profiles. At AddMe, some of the businesses we have worked with have seen huge increases in their sales as a direct result of collecting more positive reviews. They are all happy with their decision to make reviews a focal point and our testimonials page gives validation to this point of why collecting online reviews can prove to be vital for more success. To learn more about how AddMe Reviews works, you can begin a trial of the platform by clicking the button below.
